Cramer Seminar Series

Class of 1978 Life Sciences Center

Faculty

Caitlin E. Hicks Pries

Assistant Professor

Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences

Graduate Program in Ecology, Evolution, Ecosystems and Society

I am broadly interested in the terrestrial carbon cycle and how the carbon balance of ecosystems is determined by the interplay of soil and plant processes with climate. I have recently focused on deep soil organic carbon in temperate ecosystems and what processes determine its stability and how those stabilization processes are affected by climate change. Throughout my research, I use isotopes (both natural abundance and enriched levels) as tools: I enrich plants in 13C and 15N in order to trace the fate of their organic matter in soils, I use the δ13C and ∆14C (radiocarbon) of respired CO2 to partition ecosystem into plant and microbial sources, and I use radiocarbon to estimate the age of soil carbon and model soil carbon processes.